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Gordon Brown has said he deeply regrets bringing Peter Mandelson into his government, and that revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s influence on UK politics had caused him revulsion.
Writing in the Guardian, Brown said the news that Mandelson was passing information to Epstein while he was business secretary was “a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country”.
Brown said he was at fault for making Mandelson a peer and bringing him back into government in 2008, after Mandelson had quit as an MP to become EU trade commissioner.
“I have to take personal responsibility for appointing Mandelson to his ministerial role in 2008. I greatly regret this appointment,” he wrote, saying that at the time he was told that Mandelson’s record in Brussels had been “unblemished” and he did not know about any Epstein links.
“I did so in spite of him being anything but a friend to me, because I thought that his unquestioned knowledge of Europe and beyond could help us as we dealt with the global financial crisis,” Brown wrote.
“I now know that I was wrong. He seems to have used market-sensitive inside information to betray the principles in which he said he believed, and he betrayed the people who believed in them – and him.”
Mandelson was sacked as Keir Starmer’s ambassador to the US in September after new details emerged of his friendship with Epstein, ties that lasted beyond the late child sex offender’s jailing in 2008.
But the release this week of masses of new documents about Epstein and his contacts showed the closeness of their ties. They also suggested Mandelson had received money from Epstein, and had leaked market-sensitive information to the financier, which is now the subject of a criminal investigation.
Labour MPs have expressed alarm that Starmer’s decision to publish thousands of documents about Mandelson could lead to months of damaging headlines.
In a statement on Friday afternoon, the Met said officers were searching two homes connected to Mandelson, in north London and Wiltshire. Mandelson has been living in a rented property in Wiltshire since returning to the UK.
“The searches are related to an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offences involving a 72-year-old man. He has not been arrested and inquiries are ongoing,” the statement said.
This week’s revelations caused fury among many Labour MPs, especially after Starmer disclosed in the Commons on Wednesday that he had agreed to the ambassadorial appointment while knowing about Mandleson’s post-prison ties to Epstein.
In response to a Conservative Commons motion, the prime minister has agreed to the publication of all documents, emails and messages connected to the appointment, an extremely broad remit that is worrying some Labour MPs.
Government officials said on Friday that the total number of documents was thought to be in the “high tens of thousands”. One said: “It’s a very big task. This is a public inquiry-level amount of information.”
Starmer had hoped to publish a mass of documents about the case on Wednesday. However, the scale of the task, in which officials will have to check every document for sensitive information, with any relevant ones passed to parliament’s intelligence and security committee for checking, could result in embarrassing revelations dribbling out over weeks or months.
One MP said that while this was unwelcome, there was “no way to avoid it, as it would look like a coverup”. Another said it was important to make sure the ISC had the necessary resources to cope with the expected workload.
Although No 10 hoped MPs’ anger would dissipate over the weekend, there were renewed calls on Friday for the removal of Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who is close to Mandelson and is believed to have pushed for the appointment.
The Labour MP for Stroud, Simon Opher, told the BBC: “Keir Starmer needs to change his advisers in No 10. I think he’s been badly advised, and he’s been really let down, particularly on this decision.
“I know in politics we really rely on people to cover our backs, our advisers, and I think they patently haven’t done this with Peter Mandelson. So we need a bit of a clearout at No 10.”
Asked whether that meant sacking McSweeney, Opher replied: “I think so, yes. If my chief of staff had done this I think he would be looking for another job, to be honest.”
Downing Street said on Friday that McSweeney retained the prime minister’s confidence.
Also on Friday, the immigration minister, Mike Tapp, said that while he understood MPs’ anger, the party needed to “stick with Keir Starmer”.
Brown, in his article, said he worried deeply about the corrosive effect such scandals had on public opinion, and called for what he termed “comprehensive and immediate action to clean up our politics”.
As part of that, he said, new government ministers should face US-style confirmation hearings, “to ensure the right questions are asked and answered in public about present and past interests and conduct”.
Brown also called for a powerful and independent anti-corruption commission, and for expanded powers for the ethics and integrity commission, set up by Starmer’s government last year.
